Birthday Party: A Lilly Bennett Mystery

In Marne Davis Kellogg's fifth intricately plotted, wildly entertaining mystery, Marshal Lilly Bennett, hot on the trail of an unlikely serial murderer, finds herself drugged and lost in the Nevada desert. Out West, where open spaces are practically sacred, land developers are considered the closest thing to Satan, so it's really no surprise to Lilly Bennett when members of the Johnson clan--the evil spirits behind the Johnson Land Company--start getting bumped off. It all begins with a masked gunman's very surprising appearance at a charity dinner. With her trusty Glock pistol tucked in her evening bag, Lilly chases the murderer across food-laden tables, startling the guests even more and ruining her brand-new Yves Saint Laurent aubergine shantung suit in the process, only to have the killer escape in the Bennett family helicopter. Needless to say, the marshal is more than eager to get even. As any reader of Marne Davis Kellogg's wickedly biting, cleverly conceived, and always amusing mysteries will know, nothing that happens to the Bennett clan of Bennett's Fort, Wyoming, ever takes place on a small scale. In Birthday Party, Lilly and her oh-so-proper mother spend time hobnobbing with a bevy of Las Vegas showgirls; the marshal and her hunky new husband, Richard, find themselves wining and dining with mobsters; and Bennett's Fort entertains a superstar at a party. Events unfold at breakneck speed, and the entertainment never lets up, right through the startling and deliciously satisfying conclusion.